Do You Leave Your Smartphone plugged in Overnight?

After washing up, every night the last thing you do is drop my phone into a charger, and then you’re able to wake up in the morning to a full phone battery that will last through the workday. Smartphone users around the world have all adopted this habit. But I have heard that this can shorten its lifespan. Is this true?

In fact, you might have heard a lot of contradictory advice about batteries out there. The reason for this is because there are a lot of different types of batteries, and different types require different care. But for taday’s smartphones, virtually all of them use lithium-ion batteries and do have an automatic shutoff mechanism built in to prevent overcharging that might cause a potential fire hazard. If this is your concern, then rest at ease that the right charging hardware coupled with the right non-shady smartphone shouldn’t be a hazard to your person or property.

That aside, however, Lithium-ion batteries don’t need to be charged all the way to 100%. The reason for this is simple. As your phone runs throughout the night, it loses battery life. This causes the charging mechanism to kick in over and over again as measurable amounts of battery drain occurs during standby. Your phone checking email, receiving text messages, and various apps doing their updates can do a lot to your phone’s battery while you sleep.

Think about it! If you head to bed at 11 p.m. with a battery percentage in the single digits, your phone will be fully charged by 2 a.m. If you wake up at 6 a.m., that’s 4 hours that your phone stays plugged in with a full battery.

So what should you do to keep your phone’s battery in top shape? Consider one of these options:

• A Portable Phone Charger. Instead of plugging in at night, re-wire your habits and start your re-charge routine in the middle of the day. No matter where you are, you can get juiced up with a portable phone charger. The Kinkoo Infinite One Portable Battery Charger is capable of charging an iPhone 4.5 times. Moreover, it has the short circuit and over-charge protection to automatically turn down and interrupt the current flowing through it when the phone is charged up to 100%.

• A Socket Timer. The same sort of outlet timer you might use to power down your Christmas lights can be used to “unplug” your phone. The compact Belkin Conserve Socket can be set to shut down in half an hour, 3 hours or 6 hours.